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The Liberation of Sound (Varèse) PDF
The Liberation of Sound (Varèse) PDF
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THE LIBERATION OF SOUND
EDGARD VARESE
11
PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC
I am sure that the time will come when the composer, after he has
graphically realized his score, will see this score automatically put on
a machine which will faithfully transmit the musical content to the
listener. As frequencies and new rhythms will have to be indicated
on the score, our actual notation will be inadequate. The new notation
will probably be seismographic. And here it is curious to note that at
the beginning of two eras, the Mediaeval primitive and our own
primitive era (for we are at a new primitive stage in music today)
we are faced with an identical problem: the problem of finding graphic
symbols for the transposition of the composer's thought into sound.
At a distance of more than a thousand years we have this analogy:
our still primitive electrical instruments find it necessary to abandon
staff notation and to use a kind of seismographic writing much like
the early ideographic writing originally used for the voice before the
development of staff notation. Formerly the curves of the musical line
indicated the melodic fluctuations of the voice, today the machine-
instrument requires precise design indications.
MUSIC AS AN ART-SCIENCE*
And here are the advantages I anticipate from such a machine: libera-
tion from the arbitrary, paralyzing tempered system; the possibility
* From a lecture given at the University of Southern
California, 1939.
* 12
Varese in his studio
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International Guild,
Composers'Inc.
founded I92I
Fourth Season
[.1 ~ ~Third Concert
NEW MUSIC I
presented )by
:: aanEnsemble composed of
JOHN BARCLAY
q1 an(l
The Leading Players of the Philadelphia Orchestra
?jxr~ iconducted by.
{s ~ LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI e
1 (by special permission of the Board of Iirectors of the
Philadelphia Orchestra)'
b (I ecaPROGRAMX
I. Serenade ........................... .Arnold Schinberg
(first..time in America) (1924)
1 1. March .
. 2. Minuet
l 3. Variations
4. Sonnet by Petrarca i
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r e 5. Dance Scene
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6. Song without worls
7. Finale
~ilM ~Progralnt
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Aeolian Hall
Ci lS Sunday Evening, Februar' 14, 1926, at 8.30 o'clock
My fight for the liberation of sound and for my right to make music
with any sound and all sounds has sometimes been construed as a
* From a lecture
given at Princeton University, 1959.
14
THE LIBERATION OF SOUND
desire to disparage and even to discard the great music of the past.
But that is where my roots are. No matter how original, how differ-
ent a composer may seem, he has only grafted a little bit of himself on
the old plant. But this he should be allowed to do without being ac-
cused of wanting to kill the plant. He only wants to produce a new
flower. It does not matter if at first it seems to some people more like a
cactus than a rose. Many of the old masters are my intimate friends-
all are respected colleagues. None of them are dead saints-in fact
none of them are dead-and the rules they made for themselves are
not sacrosanct and are not everlasting laws. Listening to music by
Perotin, Machaut, Monteverdi, Bach, or Beethoven we are conscious
of living substances; they are "alive in the present." But music written
in the manner of another century is the result of culture and, desirable
and comfortable as culture may be, an artist should not lie down in it.
The best bit of criticism Andre Gide ever wrote was this confession,
which must have been wrung from him by self-torture: "When I read
Rimbaud or the Sixth Song of Maldorer, I am ashamed of my own
works and everything that is only the result of culture."
Because for so many years I crusaded for new instruments with what
may have seemed fanatical zeal, I have been accused of desiring
nothing less than the destruction of all musical instruments and even
of all performers. This is, to say the least, an exaggeration. Our new
liberating medium-the electronic-is not meant to replace the old
musical instruments which composers, including myself, will continue
to use. Electronics is an additive, not a destructive factor in the art and
science of music. It is because new instruments have been constantly
added to the old ones that Western music has such a rich and varied
patrimony.
Grateful as we must be for the new medium, we should not expect
miracles from machines. The machine can give out only what we put
into it. The musical principles remain the same whether a composer
writes for orchestra or tape. Rhythm and Form are still his most
important problems and the two elements in music most generally
misunderstood.
Rhythm is too often confused with metrics. Cadence or the regular
succession of beats and accents has little to do with the rhythm of a
composition. Rhythm is the element in music that gives life to the
work and holds it together. It is the element of stability, the generator
of form. In my own works, for instance, rhythm derives from the
simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at calcu-
lated, but not regular time lapses. This corresponds more nearly to
15
PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC
the definition of rhythm in physics and philosophy as "a succession of
alternate and opposite or correlative states."
As for form, Busoni once wrote: "Is it not singular to demand of a
composer originality in all things and to forbid it as regards form?
No wonder that if he is original he is accused of formlessness."2
The misunderstanding has come from thinking of form as a point
of departure, a pattern to be followed, a mold to be filled. Form is a
result-the result of a process. Each of my works discovers its own
form. I could never have fitted them into any of the historical con-
tainers. If you want to fill a rigid box of a definite shape, you must
have something to put into it that is the same shape and size or that is
elastic or soft enough to be made to fit in. But if you try to force into
it something of a different shape and harder substance, even if its
volume and size are the same, it will break the box. My music cannot
be made to fit into any of the traditional music boxes.
Conceiving musical form as a resultant-the result of a process, I
was struck by what seemed to me an analogy between the formation of
my compositions and the phenomenon of crystallization. Let me quote
the crystallographic description given me by Nathaniel Arbiter, pro-
fessor of mineralogy at Columbia University:
"The crystal is characterized by both a definite external form and
a definite internal structure. The internal structure is based on the
unit of crystal which is the smallest grouping of the atoms that has the
order and composition of the substance. The extension of the unit into
space forms the whole crystal. But in spite of the relatively limited
variety of internal structures, the external forms of crystals are
limitless."
Then Mr. Arbiter added in his own words: "Crystal form itself is
a resultant [the very word I have always used in reference to musical
form] rather than a primary attribute. Crystal form is the consequence
of the interaction of attractive and repulsive forces and the ordered
packing of the atom."
This, I believe, suggests better than any explanation I could give
about the way my works are formed. There is an idea, the basis of an
internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups
of sound constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed, attracted
and repulsed by various forces. The form of the work is the conse-
quence of this interaction. Possible musical forms are as limitless as
the exterior forms of crystals.
2 See note 4.
16
THE LIBERATION OF SOUND
First of all I should like you to consider what I believe is the best
definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: "the corporealization
of the intelligence that is in sound,"as proposedby Hoene Wronsky.5
If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary
definitionswhich make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feel-
3 Samuel Beckett, Proust (1957).
4Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), Entwurf einer neuen Asthetik der Tonkunst
(1907); published in English as Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music (T. Baker,
tr.; 1911).
* From a lecture given at Yale University, 1962.
5 Hoine Wronsky (1778-1853), also known as Joseph Marie Wronsky, was a
Polish philosopher and mathematician, known for his system of Messianism. Camille
Durutte (1803-81), in his Technie Harmonique (1876), a treatise on "musical mathe-
matics," quoted extensively from the writings of Wronsky.
17
PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC
chines we use for making music can only give back what we put into
them. But, considering the fact that our electronic devices were never
meant for making music, but for the sole purpose of measuring and
analyzing sound, it is remarkable that what has already been achieved
is musically valid. They are still somewhat unwieldy and time-
consuming and not entirely satisfactory as an art-medium. But this
new art is still in its infancy, and I hope and firmly believe, now that
composers and physicists are at last working together, and music is
again linked with science, as it was in the Middle Ages, that new and
more musically efficient devices will be invented.
-Edited and Annotated by Chou Wen-chung
* 19'